Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Elk People
Several hunters approached the pond on ATVs and before they saw me wave, had plenty of time to plan out where they were going to sit, talking and pointing this way and that. Eventually I got their attention (good, I thought. The camo is working). Then they just disappeared. I got everything as ready as I could; rehearsed scenarios of various kinds. What if the elk enter through this gate? Or that one? How much can I turn my body without being noticed? I sorted out my best arrows, knocked one and left the number two arrow within easy reach. I donned my ghillie suit , something I had rarely felt necessary.
I waited. I conducted small scale warfare against the carpenter ants who competed for my space among the dead wood. At about 10 minutes to seven, 40 minutes before the sun officially set, I looked up on the opposite bank of the pond and was surprised to see a man, older but fit, wearing civilian clothing. He too seemed oblivious to my presence (or to the fact that it was hunting season). He was watching the sun set, apparently. Hopefully he was not waiting to see elk. Hopefully he was not a representative of PETA. He was positioned so that if the elk had entered from my left, I would not be able to shoot at them safely because an errant arrow could kill the innocent bystander. Just as I was about to lose patience with him and stand up to ask him to leave, he rose and padded off as quietly as he had come in. Luckily he walked to the East. A few minutes later the elk walked in from the West.
There were 6 or 7. My adrenaline was pumping too hard to count. At first it was all cows, then two calves. They stood outside the fence which formed the Western opening to the watering hole area. They sniffed the air cautiously. My surprise at seeing them would not have been greater if Cernunos himself had walked by. I had been waiting for them of course, but my expectations were so miserably low that actually seeing them hadn’t entered into my imagination in any concrete way. Oh my god, I thought, there they are. Right on cue, I realized as I looked down at the clock on my GPS. Twenty minutes before sunset, the end of legal shooting time. Twenty minutes for one of them to move into position, if I were to be so lucky. The wind, which had been shifting some, was luckily blowing in from the Northwest, the perfect angle. As it had been to the men who had come before, my concealment seemed to be 100 percent effective. After a moment the cows walked in through the gate in a loose huddle. The lead cow, darker and older most likely, stopped again to sniff the air. The others waited for her approval. They relaxed and ambled toward the water. I expected, that like cattle, they would stop and drink from the water’s edge. Instead they jumped in as if it were a backyard swimming pool and they were a hot tired family on a Saturday. They seemed to be really enjoying themselves, scooping up mouthfuls of water and swimming about playfully.
The pond was deeper than I thought, too deep for the calves for sure. There were two elk I had my eye on. The older one got out of the pond and walked into the meadow directly to the West. She grazed casually at about 46 yards. My range finder shook so badly in my hand that I wasn’t sure I could trust the readings. I could barely make them out anyway. My heart was pounding. The physiological excitement felt totally unnatural, as it was so much greater than anything I had experienced in memory. My heart was out of control, louder to me than any other sounds. I breathed with my diaphragm. No effect. I tried again. Ok, a little bit this time.
The other elk was about 40 yards away, but she was almost completely submerged in the water. She quartered forward but wouldn’t give me a safe shot. She was still on the other side of the pond when I heard her talk. It was the first time I had heard a cow talk. And that’s truly what it is too, talking. I suddenly understood why some Native Americans had called them the Elk People. Sentient beings that I was about to kill. She made several different utterances directed at one of the calves. I felt like I could understand her. She was saying, come here, now, do what I tell you youngling, don’t worry, it’s safe. No its not, I thought.
After long minutes she moved without determination toward my edge of the pond. With shaky hands I now ranged her at 36 yards. She was still in the water but now her vitals were showing. She turned this way and that, then stood still at a perfect broadside, 35 yards. If my shot was a pass-through I’d lose my arrow in the water. So what, I thought. I didn’t want to have to pull her body out of the stinking pond though. More of a concern was the calf who was romping and playing in the water just beyond her. It moved off and left an open shot.
I raised my bow, pulled back without a sound, set my 35 yard pin on her. Surprisingly my bow arm was still, rock solid. My head was cloudy. I was barely conscious. I breathed again. Ok, a little better now. I rolled my eyes skyward and asked myself, do I really want to do this? All my training, all my disappointment, and now it seemed too easy. Everything, every last detail had come together and I was at that critical moment, to take a life, a precious life. I didn’t let myself think beyond that. In fact, I stopped thinking at all. My right hand just let go, on automatic, as if I were shooting on the target range. I had aimed but somehow the act was not as deliberate as I had always imagined. My mind was blank. So blank that I think I missed a few seconds. I remember the sound of the bow snap, but my brain couldn’t record any more information immediately after that instant. I didn’t see the arrow fly or strike. The next thing I remember, all the elk were moving away from me, as if one of them had issued a rallying call. Water splashing, hooves pounding, all moving in slow motion. At first I couldn’t see the arrow. Then the blood oozing out of her side made clear where it had gone. It was still in her, and not very deep. It was too high, a possible shoulder blade shot. Shit. I forgot to calculate the difference in altitude. She was at least 15 feet lower in elevation at only 35 yards. I should have used my 30 pin.
The elk gathered high on the opposite bank forming a circle of protection just in front of the gate. They were all quiet, each one looking in a different direction. One stood very close to the wounded cow. Her guard licked her wound for her. She presented a wall between the wounded one and I. I had already knocked my other arrow, but they ranged at 96 yards. My highest sight pin is 50. They were bunched together, and based on the lousy penetration I got with my first broad head, I was afraid all I would do was spill more imperfect blood. All the ground between my blind and the elk was completely open. No cover. They were now keenly alert. There was no way. I had to wait.
The wounded elk held her right front leg up. She didn’t want to walk at first. She stood there for a long time while the other elk guarded her. Eventually she tried to walk, in tight woozy circles. Just at about sundown, the bull that claimed this harem showed up. He never came inside the fence, not that I would have shot at him anyway. After a soundless consultation the herd slowly moved back out the gate and gently moved away to the south toward Mt Taylor with the wounded cow in the lead. The Bull took up the rear. I lost sight of them in the trees before they were 50 yards from the gate.
It was moments before dark. If I moved I risked spooking the herd into a run. If I waited I would lose the blood trail in the dark. I opted to move, looking ahead with binoculars, carefully trying not to alarm the now invisible herd any further. I found the blood trail but lost it almost immediately. This only added to my anxiety that she was not too badly hurt. She will likely live, I thought, suffer most likely. If my arrow did take her it would be a slow painful death from infection. This was not what I wanted. I would lose the meat and make this regal, sentient being suffer.
I wasn’t sure what to do. To blindly follow a blood trail that wasn’t long enough to establish a trajectory in the dark was sure to spook the unwounded animals. To quit and wait till morning would mean I would still likely never find the animal, and if I did it might be too late to save the meat. The thought that won me over was the fantasy that she might return to the scene of the crime the next morning. I was thinking like a criminal. My guilt was making my decisions for me. I headed back to camp with the intention to call friends to help me find her. I would return before sunrise the next morning and do my best to reestablish the blood trail. I was broken hearted, but not as much as she. As I slowly returned to my conscious self my guilt grew deeper. By the time I got to camp I was ready to pray and make amends to gods that I did not formerly believe in. Cernunos, I prayed, please make a swift end to the elk, the mother of calves now orphaned. Let her suffering be light, and free her mind (yes, her mind, she could talk after all) of fear. Let her calf be cared for and let someone, anyone, feast on her body that her death may not be in vain.
To the extent that I could verify it, most of my prayers were answered. My penance was that my family would not eat elk this winter. Another hunter’s family would. All that I found was a gut bag, all bones and meat carefully removed. I found it around 11 the next morning. The guts did not yet smell foul, though the vultures and crows had led me to her. I may have missed the hunters by as little as an hour. My arrow was nowhere to be seen. However the blood trail that I had reestablished had led me right to this spot. It’s possible that the hunters had seen her the previous night heading away from my torment. If they had been properly hidden, they could have downed her with a second well placed arrow (still an illegal shot as it would have had to have happened after sunset). More likely, I realized later as I thought through more of the details, my arrow had killed her. It had likely missed or perhaps broken past the shoulder blade. It was at a sufficiently obtuse angle, pointing downward from the point of impact, that it could have punctured her lung opposite the entry point. The blood trail ran steady every few feet for 300 yards before it had petered out. She only made it a half mile before she lay down to die. The hunters, more likely, came upon her early in the morning before light. Most certainly an unethical thing to do, but at least the meat didn’t go to waste.
The next weekend I returned for one last chance to fill my tag, convinced by this time that my elk had been removed from the National Forest with another hunter’s tag in her ear. But before I went I touched base with family and friends as I would be alone and out of cell phone range for several days. So when I called my vegetarian brother in California, he wished that I would have a good time, but he also hoped I wouldn't kill anything. I didn't want to argue with him about it so I just politely got off the phone. I tried to let it go but it nagged at me for the next day. Walking all over, seeing no elk sign, nothing but time to think, I gradually returned to myself and remembered why I do this. Another vegetarian friend had, not too long ago, spit her venom at me about my hunting, judgmentally claiming the moral high ground for sparing animals' suffering. Then I remembered the white tail deer of Iowa; the ones that are gut-shot by farmers every year so that they will stop eating the corn, go off in the woods and die a slow painful death where they won't stink up the fields (Richard Manning). And how about the millions of rabbits and field mice who are unceremoniously chopped up by wheat combines all over this country each fall (Michael Polan)? And how about the millions of acres of habitat that have been thoughtlessly stolen from the wildlife in this country... millions of acres stolen, bloodied with the bodies of gut-shot deer, antelope, rabbits, field mice and god knows what else, all so that the majority of 27 million vegetarian Americans can drive their gasoline powered cars to the supermarket and claim the moral high ground. Ah, yes, that's why I hunt. Because I refuse to lie to myself about where my food comes from (and where my fuel comes from for that matter), and I am therefore compelled to do the best I can to fill my children's bellies with honest meat, fruits and vegetables. I then remembered the priests of old, who slaughtered animals with reverence. They were connected to the food they eat, they knew it personally, and they took responsibility for the never ending cycle of life and death. When they plunged the knife in, they did not do it with malice. They did it with the grim acceptance that they are part of the cycle of life, not above it. They were filled with gratitude and no small amount of compassion for the animal. They were not alienated from the source of their nourishment, their source of life, and therefore they were truly alive.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Deer hunt 2009
SO I just returned from my deer hunt, unsuccessful as usual. Still, after 4 decent tries (one of them aborted) I have yet to bring down big game. On three of the four I saw not one of my prey. This hunt was a return to the one area I really thought had potential because its the one area I really have seen a lot of deer. (My hunt buddy and I were pleased to hear that others have recently sighted antelope and oryx there as well! We, however, appear to be an allergen to all cloven hoofed animals).
What am I doing wrong?!? Did I not pray hard enough to the horned God Cernunos? Did I forget to wipe? Perhaps it was the fault of Burritos Al Instante and its deleterious effect on my digestive system? Am I a lot more noisy than I thought? Too many hours in front of guitar amp speakers I'd wager.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not completely discouraged and I am already looking forward to applying to the next set of hunts. In fact, I had a lot of fun on this trip, courtesy of my new hunt buddy, who turns out to be one funny dude (see photo). Laughter is hard to contain in a ground blind but we managed. I laughed more this trip than I had laughed in months. Still their were hardships as one might expect from a 6600 ft elevation hunt in early January.
It wasn't the coldest night I'd ever spent, but the fact that there were not one, but two nights of appendage freezing conditions made up for the relatively balmy 24 degrees Fahrenheit in my tent. Yes. that's right, I said tent, not camper, RV, camper shell, fire-fed tee-pee or pop-up anything. Hunt buddy and I slept in a tent rated down to, I estimate, 50 degrees at the coldest. The design of this tent is appropriate for only one thing, star gazing on a summer's night. The rain-fly was an afterthought. We even modified ours with a tarp over top to try and hold in a little more of the heat. More of the heat? WHAT HEAT!?! The first night the wind picked up in bursts that took our tarp on a wild and noisy ride for hours on end. And we know because we were awake for every last shuddering flap. Many times in the night our paranoia got the better of us and we seriously considered that there might be an agitated bear, a hungry cougar or even a sizable mob of angry peasants with pitchforks and torches threatening to tear down our makeshift summer shelter and rend us from our bones. Alas it was only the bone chilling wind, thoroughly venting our nylon cave with a windchill of Cernunos knows what and making us long for the comforts of our fire places and families of four.
Needless to say, we didn't sleep a lot that first night. But we dutifully drug our frozen carcases out of our popsicle sleeping bags at 5:30 sharp, forgoing coffee for fear of missing an early rising deer, so that we could finish the frost-bite of our toes sitting in an east facing ground blind over looking the only watering hole for more than a mile radius.
No one came. No one with four legs that is. Several parties of road hunters passed by and thoroughly destroyed our already dim chances of sighting a deer. That was our first awkward lesson. During the opening days of the season, it's best to get off the road, even if you have seen deer at that incredibly convenient location. They are likely offended by the wafts of diesel, gasoline and possibly even biodiesel. By our third day we had finally learned our lesson, forsaking that formerly glorious blind for a nearby saddle and the less accessible rolling hills of pinion and juniper west of the water hole. Yet our four mile plus day in the hills was cursed further by a cold, hard wind preceding a storm system churning further West. The deer, if there were any, were in deep cover and not likely to answer the orders of Cernunos and show up for the slaughter.
When I was once describing my weapon of choice, the bow, someone asked me rhetorically, "and what weapons do the deer have?" Apart from sharp pointy things on their heads with which they could choose to run a man through (but don't really, as flight is much more a part of their personality make up than fight) they have the most remarkable defensive weapons. How, in such open country with hundred mile vistas they remain hidden from our prying eyes, enhanced with the magnifying power of binoculars, is a skill that forces reluctant respect, reminded all the more of it by sore feet and glutes. They say the more you hunt something the more you respect it, and it always seemed like such a load of rationalizing hunter romanticism that it was easy to dismiss until you experienced it. Yeah, I do respect an eight hundred pound, seven foot long oaf who can stay one step ahead of me regardless of how doggedly I track him, avoid my ambush and live to see another hunting season, adding point after point to his rack, like marks on a bedpost. When he finally does fall to the ambitious archers arrow, it's only because he was drunk off his own hormones, raging in response to the estrus that promotes the continuation of his species.
Pray Cernunos that I might one day be that ambitious archer, poised and ready to feed his family for the better part of the year. Pray, and pray, but it will have to wait for another day.
What am I doing wrong?!? Did I not pray hard enough to the horned God Cernunos? Did I forget to wipe? Perhaps it was the fault of Burritos Al Instante and its deleterious effect on my digestive system? Am I a lot more noisy than I thought? Too many hours in front of guitar amp speakers I'd wager.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not completely discouraged and I am already looking forward to applying to the next set of hunts. In fact, I had a lot of fun on this trip, courtesy of my new hunt buddy, who turns out to be one funny dude (see photo). Laughter is hard to contain in a ground blind but we managed. I laughed more this trip than I had laughed in months. Still their were hardships as one might expect from a 6600 ft elevation hunt in early January.
It wasn't the coldest night I'd ever spent, but the fact that there were not one, but two nights of appendage freezing conditions made up for the relatively balmy 24 degrees Fahrenheit in my tent. Yes. that's right, I said tent, not camper, RV, camper shell, fire-fed tee-pee or pop-up anything. Hunt buddy and I slept in a tent rated down to, I estimate, 50 degrees at the coldest. The design of this tent is appropriate for only one thing, star gazing on a summer's night. The rain-fly was an afterthought. We even modified ours with a tarp over top to try and hold in a little more of the heat. More of the heat? WHAT HEAT!?! The first night the wind picked up in bursts that took our tarp on a wild and noisy ride for hours on end. And we know because we were awake for every last shuddering flap. Many times in the night our paranoia got the better of us and we seriously considered that there might be an agitated bear, a hungry cougar or even a sizable mob of angry peasants with pitchforks and torches threatening to tear down our makeshift summer shelter and rend us from our bones. Alas it was only the bone chilling wind, thoroughly venting our nylon cave with a windchill of Cernunos knows what and making us long for the comforts of our fire places and families of four.
Needless to say, we didn't sleep a lot that first night. But we dutifully drug our frozen carcases out of our popsicle sleeping bags at 5:30 sharp, forgoing coffee for fear of missing an early rising deer, so that we could finish the frost-bite of our toes sitting in an east facing ground blind over looking the only watering hole for more than a mile radius.
No one came. No one with four legs that is. Several parties of road hunters passed by and thoroughly destroyed our already dim chances of sighting a deer. That was our first awkward lesson. During the opening days of the season, it's best to get off the road, even if you have seen deer at that incredibly convenient location. They are likely offended by the wafts of diesel, gasoline and possibly even biodiesel. By our third day we had finally learned our lesson, forsaking that formerly glorious blind for a nearby saddle and the less accessible rolling hills of pinion and juniper west of the water hole. Yet our four mile plus day in the hills was cursed further by a cold, hard wind preceding a storm system churning further West. The deer, if there were any, were in deep cover and not likely to answer the orders of Cernunos and show up for the slaughter.
When I was once describing my weapon of choice, the bow, someone asked me rhetorically, "and what weapons do the deer have?" Apart from sharp pointy things on their heads with which they could choose to run a man through (but don't really, as flight is much more a part of their personality make up than fight) they have the most remarkable defensive weapons. How, in such open country with hundred mile vistas they remain hidden from our prying eyes, enhanced with the magnifying power of binoculars, is a skill that forces reluctant respect, reminded all the more of it by sore feet and glutes. They say the more you hunt something the more you respect it, and it always seemed like such a load of rationalizing hunter romanticism that it was easy to dismiss until you experienced it. Yeah, I do respect an eight hundred pound, seven foot long oaf who can stay one step ahead of me regardless of how doggedly I track him, avoid my ambush and live to see another hunting season, adding point after point to his rack, like marks on a bedpost. When he finally does fall to the ambitious archers arrow, it's only because he was drunk off his own hormones, raging in response to the estrus that promotes the continuation of his species.
Pray Cernunos that I might one day be that ambitious archer, poised and ready to feed his family for the better part of the year. Pray, and pray, but it will have to wait for another day.
Monday, December 15, 2008
A level III future
Last year I wrote a piece that I called “Ten probable futures.” At that time I wrote: “My reading of anthropology and history leads me to disbelieve in a teleological view of life on earth. We are not all headed toward a particular, universally positive goal. If we were then why are we are all so visibly running is so many different directions? The thrust of history, if we ignore for the moment most theology, does not take us to heaven on earth. Nor does it take us to hell. I believe that, a level ten disaster notwithstanding (a disaster completely out of our control such as being hit by an asteroid), we have the choice of whether or not to make our world a better place. The current tendency, however, is clearly toward self destruction, and as the evidence builds it becomes harder and harder to believe that that destruction will wait for a future generation…”
Although it was meant as an awareness raising piece and a critique of teleological thinking, it was not a completely gloomy picture. I still, nearly a year later, believe that it might not be too late for us to achieve what I termed a level III future, what David Korten and others have called the Great Turning and the transition town concept and our meetings have renewed that hope. Having recently been introduced to the idea of Transistion Towns I am now working to reframe my earlier work. So as a participant with this transition town effort I submit my vision of the future to the discussion. For me that means a level III.
This is how I described it a year ago: “A prosperous way down,” The title of the Odums’ book from 1999. Things deteriorate very slowly. Like a mild long term recession that we hardly notice, in this scenario the world makes a soft landing. Though we start to run out of resources, we realize it in time and embrace policies and behaviors that ensure a new world rises from the ashes of the old, though at a lower intensity and with necessary downshift in our standard of living.”
I think I can flesh that out a little now. Perhaps it raises more questions than answers. I tried to emphasize the soft landing and it required a leap of faith that things will turn out better than I currently think they will. But anything is possible and it provides something to work for. Anyway, it was fun to write. Here’s my “letter from the future”.
It’s been 40 years now since the great crash of 08, long enough that many people working on the farm here don’t remember it. We sit around at night regaling them with stories about how things used to be. We conserve light bulbs now because they are expensive, but bees wax candles are fairly ubiquitous so our evening entertainment is lighted, courtesy of the bees. Our own honey operation took off with great gusto once the supply of sugar from Central and South America became rationed. The producing countries that weren’t torn apart by civil war were busy turning their sugar cane into ethanol for their cars. It worked for a while giving them a tremendous economic advantage and avoiding war for a while longer, but as the land degraded and the yields went down most of those fields were abandoned. Domestic honey became increasingly valuable as a result. Consequently, the bees needed more things to pollinate, so the provisional Government of the new country of New Mexico commenced a seed and fruit tree distribution effort and outlawed a number of formerly destructive practices. Acreage devoted to mixed use orchards were increased and raising cattle was greatly reduced (and were required to practice rotational grazing). Horses were limited to those that were necessary for transportation or beasts of burden. A few had to be put down, and their owners were heart broken, but their husbandry skills were so badly needed that most of them reintegrated well enough. In any case we ended up with a net increase of horses, donkeys, goats, oxen and a decrease in cattle.
Yeah, the young people have a hard time believing some of the stories we tell them. They’ve always known a world where crime rates were low because people desperate enough to steal had a hard time getting around without get-away vehicles and no where to hide. School classrooms have always been small, food has always been natural, they have never seen a cheeto or a twinky, they all ride horses and burros and they all enjoy fresh air. I'm sure to tell them that this was no accident. If it hadn't been for those folks who started working in 2008 to make Santa Fe, Albuquerque and other places into Transition Towns, then we could have ended up like Phoenix or Philladelphia. They find the concept of air conditioning to be particularly fascinating. Why, they ask, did people need to spend so much of their energy back then to keep cool, even when the average temperature was about five degrees cooler? We try and explain that houses were made of artificial materials and were not designed to keep warm and cool on their own. This baffles them completely because there hasn’t been a building like that built in 25 years. Most of the old ones were torn down for their parts or fell down from lack of use. During the downturn no one could afford to live in a house that couldn’t heat and cool itself.
We do have to take special precautions on account of the heat most summers. Some of our crops have been hybridized to withstand it, but shade cloth is still a precious commodity. The good news, according to the latest report from the scientific counsel of the Confederated Nations of North America (formerly the Academy of Sciences, U.S.A), is that we might have turned the corner on the warming. Turns out the Greater Depression came along just in time. It was easy in those first 8 years for the Obama administration to capitalize on the reduction of use of fossil fuels. The hard part was keeping the nation together. When it became impossible for the representatives of the outlying states (ours being one of them) to travel to Washington several times a year, congress was abandoned and the Confederation was born.
That transition was a lot easier than anyone feared. There were few riots. By 2012 and Obama’s reelection, people had already downshifted their lifestyles considerably. Every other house in the city had a “hope garden.” Cars were still common but unfashionable and people looked at you askance if you took an unnecessary trip in one. So “local” had become practical out of necessity and when congress dissolved and the constitutional congresses of the new confederation took place simultaneously across the nation (sorry, still call it that sometimes) nobody was really surprised and everyone participated without complaint.
The confederation still maintains a defense force at great expense and with great controversy, mostly because the young people who make up the force are needed back at home to plant and harvest, but also because no major conflicts involving the confederation have broken out since its formation. There was a scandal in 2020 when aid was surreptitiously given to one side in the conflict in Guatelateca (formerly Guatemala). Some of the old guard hadn’t gotten used to the idea that the U.S.A. was no longer around, much less pursuing manifest destiny. As a result, the funding for the defense force was reduced to one twentieth its former peak (around 2010) as each of the Nations in the confederation simply withdrew their funding one by one.
But I didn’t sit down to write a history of the great turning. I really just wanted to reflect on how far we’ve come since we started our little farm serendipitously 45 years ago. My son and his wife run the place now. I’m the grumpy and quixotic father-in-law as I butt into their business. I end up telling them how I would have done things back in the day and somehow forgetting that there are not still enough fossil fuels to spare to do it the old ways. He’s right anyways. When I suggest that we use our last five gallons of biodiesel of the season to run the old tractor, I’m mostly just thinking about my arthritis and how I don’t want to dig that hole for a tree by hand. He reminds me that rubber parts for the tractors are in short supply this year so we’re better off using our muscles than using an irreplaceable tractor. I’m not trying to bring back the past, it’s just hard to leave it all behind. I mean, it was real to me, even if Bruce doesn’t remember watching non-stop TV until he was four.
We sure had it easy back then. It’s weird to think about it. It keeps me up at nights as I think about ways to try and explain to Juniper’s children (my grandkids) how sorry I am that their life is so hard. They just laugh at me because to them it’s not hard at all. They were born into it and to them it’s no big deal to be seven and to have to work four hours a day on planting or canning or fence mending, still make time for studies and not be able to “veg out” in front of the TV and one of my old DVDs. Sorry kids, our 5o year old solar panels didn’t eek out enough energy today. You’ll have to just read a book instead. Perhaps they are the lucky ones but I still feel guilty. I started my own turning sooner than most but I still wish I could have started sooner. Juniper tells me I’m being too hard on myself but I’m not sure she really understands how much of the earth’s endowment of energy, top soil and iron ore I personally wasted!
My second wife is the one who has perspective. Just the other night when we had a big party to celebrate our silver anniversary, and her heroic, cross country trip to meet me for the first time after the fall of Los Angeles. She caught me whining about this and she took me aside and gently reminded me of how bad things could have been. The children never starved, though they may have been hungry on occasion. The nation didn’t descend into chaos, it just broke up in an organic fashion, like so much decomposing leaf cover. Although there has been war in other countries, most of the world shifted to a lower level of intensity without much trouble. So many of them were living at lower levels anyway that much of what followed seemed like an improvement to them. In fact, it is really my privilege-the privilege I enjoyed by living at the center of the worlds greatest empire-that distorts my perspective. Our farm became one node in a network of similar efforts across the bioregion that provided education and sustenance for hundreds of former engineers and MBA holders who are now mostly great farmers. We set out to provide a safe place for our children to grow up and we got a place that was safer than we could have imagined. Our communities are loosely knitted together by the realization that we all depend deeply on one another’s success. Though we have our differences, they are at least different differences. No one begrudges another the purchase of any thing shiny and new because there are very few shiny new things to purchase; there is no keeping up with the Joneses. Instead we struggle to figure out ways to pay back the Joneses for their generosity. Besides, we still have the internet, though most of the miracles of technology failed to stand the test of time, my blog is still going strong. Happy new year everyone!
Although it was meant as an awareness raising piece and a critique of teleological thinking, it was not a completely gloomy picture. I still, nearly a year later, believe that it might not be too late for us to achieve what I termed a level III future, what David Korten and others have called the Great Turning and the transition town concept and our meetings have renewed that hope. Having recently been introduced to the idea of Transistion Towns I am now working to reframe my earlier work. So as a participant with this transition town effort I submit my vision of the future to the discussion. For me that means a level III.
This is how I described it a year ago: “A prosperous way down,” The title of the Odums’ book from 1999. Things deteriorate very slowly. Like a mild long term recession that we hardly notice, in this scenario the world makes a soft landing. Though we start to run out of resources, we realize it in time and embrace policies and behaviors that ensure a new world rises from the ashes of the old, though at a lower intensity and with necessary downshift in our standard of living.”
I think I can flesh that out a little now. Perhaps it raises more questions than answers. I tried to emphasize the soft landing and it required a leap of faith that things will turn out better than I currently think they will. But anything is possible and it provides something to work for. Anyway, it was fun to write. Here’s my “letter from the future”.
It’s been 40 years now since the great crash of 08, long enough that many people working on the farm here don’t remember it. We sit around at night regaling them with stories about how things used to be. We conserve light bulbs now because they are expensive, but bees wax candles are fairly ubiquitous so our evening entertainment is lighted, courtesy of the bees. Our own honey operation took off with great gusto once the supply of sugar from Central and South America became rationed. The producing countries that weren’t torn apart by civil war were busy turning their sugar cane into ethanol for their cars. It worked for a while giving them a tremendous economic advantage and avoiding war for a while longer, but as the land degraded and the yields went down most of those fields were abandoned. Domestic honey became increasingly valuable as a result. Consequently, the bees needed more things to pollinate, so the provisional Government of the new country of New Mexico commenced a seed and fruit tree distribution effort and outlawed a number of formerly destructive practices. Acreage devoted to mixed use orchards were increased and raising cattle was greatly reduced (and were required to practice rotational grazing). Horses were limited to those that were necessary for transportation or beasts of burden. A few had to be put down, and their owners were heart broken, but their husbandry skills were so badly needed that most of them reintegrated well enough. In any case we ended up with a net increase of horses, donkeys, goats, oxen and a decrease in cattle.
Yeah, the young people have a hard time believing some of the stories we tell them. They’ve always known a world where crime rates were low because people desperate enough to steal had a hard time getting around without get-away vehicles and no where to hide. School classrooms have always been small, food has always been natural, they have never seen a cheeto or a twinky, they all ride horses and burros and they all enjoy fresh air. I'm sure to tell them that this was no accident. If it hadn't been for those folks who started working in 2008 to make Santa Fe, Albuquerque and other places into Transition Towns, then we could have ended up like Phoenix or Philladelphia. They find the concept of air conditioning to be particularly fascinating. Why, they ask, did people need to spend so much of their energy back then to keep cool, even when the average temperature was about five degrees cooler? We try and explain that houses were made of artificial materials and were not designed to keep warm and cool on their own. This baffles them completely because there hasn’t been a building like that built in 25 years. Most of the old ones were torn down for their parts or fell down from lack of use. During the downturn no one could afford to live in a house that couldn’t heat and cool itself.
We do have to take special precautions on account of the heat most summers. Some of our crops have been hybridized to withstand it, but shade cloth is still a precious commodity. The good news, according to the latest report from the scientific counsel of the Confederated Nations of North America (formerly the Academy of Sciences, U.S.A), is that we might have turned the corner on the warming. Turns out the Greater Depression came along just in time. It was easy in those first 8 years for the Obama administration to capitalize on the reduction of use of fossil fuels. The hard part was keeping the nation together. When it became impossible for the representatives of the outlying states (ours being one of them) to travel to Washington several times a year, congress was abandoned and the Confederation was born.
That transition was a lot easier than anyone feared. There were few riots. By 2012 and Obama’s reelection, people had already downshifted their lifestyles considerably. Every other house in the city had a “hope garden.” Cars were still common but unfashionable and people looked at you askance if you took an unnecessary trip in one. So “local” had become practical out of necessity and when congress dissolved and the constitutional congresses of the new confederation took place simultaneously across the nation (sorry, still call it that sometimes) nobody was really surprised and everyone participated without complaint.
The confederation still maintains a defense force at great expense and with great controversy, mostly because the young people who make up the force are needed back at home to plant and harvest, but also because no major conflicts involving the confederation have broken out since its formation. There was a scandal in 2020 when aid was surreptitiously given to one side in the conflict in Guatelateca (formerly Guatemala). Some of the old guard hadn’t gotten used to the idea that the U.S.A. was no longer around, much less pursuing manifest destiny. As a result, the funding for the defense force was reduced to one twentieth its former peak (around 2010) as each of the Nations in the confederation simply withdrew their funding one by one.
But I didn’t sit down to write a history of the great turning. I really just wanted to reflect on how far we’ve come since we started our little farm serendipitously 45 years ago. My son and his wife run the place now. I’m the grumpy and quixotic father-in-law as I butt into their business. I end up telling them how I would have done things back in the day and somehow forgetting that there are not still enough fossil fuels to spare to do it the old ways. He’s right anyways. When I suggest that we use our last five gallons of biodiesel of the season to run the old tractor, I’m mostly just thinking about my arthritis and how I don’t want to dig that hole for a tree by hand. He reminds me that rubber parts for the tractors are in short supply this year so we’re better off using our muscles than using an irreplaceable tractor. I’m not trying to bring back the past, it’s just hard to leave it all behind. I mean, it was real to me, even if Bruce doesn’t remember watching non-stop TV until he was four.
We sure had it easy back then. It’s weird to think about it. It keeps me up at nights as I think about ways to try and explain to Juniper’s children (my grandkids) how sorry I am that their life is so hard. They just laugh at me because to them it’s not hard at all. They were born into it and to them it’s no big deal to be seven and to have to work four hours a day on planting or canning or fence mending, still make time for studies and not be able to “veg out” in front of the TV and one of my old DVDs. Sorry kids, our 5o year old solar panels didn’t eek out enough energy today. You’ll have to just read a book instead. Perhaps they are the lucky ones but I still feel guilty. I started my own turning sooner than most but I still wish I could have started sooner. Juniper tells me I’m being too hard on myself but I’m not sure she really understands how much of the earth’s endowment of energy, top soil and iron ore I personally wasted!
My second wife is the one who has perspective. Just the other night when we had a big party to celebrate our silver anniversary, and her heroic, cross country trip to meet me for the first time after the fall of Los Angeles. She caught me whining about this and she took me aside and gently reminded me of how bad things could have been. The children never starved, though they may have been hungry on occasion. The nation didn’t descend into chaos, it just broke up in an organic fashion, like so much decomposing leaf cover. Although there has been war in other countries, most of the world shifted to a lower level of intensity without much trouble. So many of them were living at lower levels anyway that much of what followed seemed like an improvement to them. In fact, it is really my privilege-the privilege I enjoyed by living at the center of the worlds greatest empire-that distorts my perspective. Our farm became one node in a network of similar efforts across the bioregion that provided education and sustenance for hundreds of former engineers and MBA holders who are now mostly great farmers. We set out to provide a safe place for our children to grow up and we got a place that was safer than we could have imagined. Our communities are loosely knitted together by the realization that we all depend deeply on one another’s success. Though we have our differences, they are at least different differences. No one begrudges another the purchase of any thing shiny and new because there are very few shiny new things to purchase; there is no keeping up with the Joneses. Instead we struggle to figure out ways to pay back the Joneses for their generosity. Besides, we still have the internet, though most of the miracles of technology failed to stand the test of time, my blog is still going strong. Happy new year everyone!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Road Rage and Racism
A strange thing happened on my way to work yesterday. I was driving along minding my own business. I had just acquired a coffee from a bourgeois establishment, laboriously turned my three-quarter ton truck around on that narrow suburban street, and set off for my final destination when I peered in my rearview mirror to see a frenetic driver, gesturing wildly, swerving at least a little back and forth, and creeping closer to my bumper with his little car than I felt comfortable with. Just then I noticed that I was approaching a school zone. I slowed down. He crept closer. Now he was tailgating me and if there is one driving behavior I cannot abide it is tailgating. Most people, I think, completely underestimate the danger that it imposes on both vehicles. I don’t mind throwing my thee-quarter ton weight around in cases like this so naturally I slammed on the breaks to give my friend in the rear view mirror a little warning, “hey little guy, I’m bigger than you are and you don’t want to go there.”
I guess he didn’t quite get the message. He proceeded, almost as if he’d planned it—I mean he acted so fast I can only wonder what he was thinking; I conversely had no time to react—to pass me on the right by using the bike lane on this single lane road. As soon as he got in front of me he stopped. As soon as he stopped he got out of his car. As soon as he got out of his car I realized that he was not a little guy at all. OH, SHIT! Worse yet, he came right to my window, waving his arms and said, “Mother fucker, you don’t cut me off and then just slam on your breaks at me! You get out that car and I will kick your motherfuckin’ ASS!” I just stared at him through my window, which suddenly seemed remarkably thin with him on the other side only a few feet away. I grinned actually, kind of a staring match sort of half-grin, that said, “I’m not going to give in to your threat, I’m gonna pretend it doesn’t bother me (or perhaps pretend this isn’t happening, eeek!) and I’ll just grin until you make your next move, I mean, you wouldn’t actually DO anything with that crossing guard up there looking this way, would you?” And he didn’t. He paused for a moment (an impossibly long, frozen time moment), seemed to regain some of his composure and slowly returned to his car, sauntered I suppose. He drove on through, past the crossing guard, and immediately turned the corner, tailgating someone else onto an unsuspecting residential side street.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make my throat hurt, I was almost dizzy with blood rushing into my head and swirling around my eyeballs. I could almost feel the adrenaline charging up my fight or flight response system, exhilarating me, giving me an uncontrollable high, the grin still not wiped from my face. Then it hit me, the crash after the high, like sugar, caffeine, heroine. But the crash wasn’t lethargy. It was a sick feeling, not nausea exactly because I didn’t feel it in my stomach, more in my head and chest as the epinephrine and cortisol raked little troughs across the surfaces of my cells, accumulating into a mesh of microscopic lacerations that ran rivulets into a gash in my very soul. I felt like I was bleeding inside, bleeding pride, bleeding fear, bleeding confidence, safety, privilege.
I was bleeding privilege because my safe little world, supported by my class standing, my gender, my relative size, my big truck and my above-average job had been breached. A total stranger had suddenly and unexpectedly shattered my illusory bubble. Physical threats are not something that average white, middle class men have to put up with very often. I can only think of two other times in my adult life where I faced such mortal danger from another human. That’s probably more than most folks in my position. But for Black men, or women, the same can not be said. Oh, did I mention? My partner in road rage this day was Black? Yeah, a big, angry, able bodied, Black man. Why does it matter?
It matters because I am white. And as any good antiracist will tell you, that produces a series of interlocking dynamics triggered by the complex social landscape in which this altercation took place. If he had been white I still would have been scared, though not quite as much (unless he was one of those really scary white dudes with big muscles, tattoos, facial hair, you know the kind). I still wouldn’t have gotten out of the truck. But I also wouldn’t have been tempted after the fact to wonder what his race, or his perception of my race, might have had to do with his behavior. Moreover, in the alternate reality where I might have reacted differently, or if one of us had pushed it to an actual physical exchange of blows, the stakes would have been decidedly different and if that had happened and he were Black, in the aftermath (assuming I survived) all the cards would have been stacked in my favor.
Before I go on I should detail some more of my fear-based thought process that ran its ugly course through the darker corners of my mind while my adrenal cortex was still pumping like a windmill in a hurricane. Before I go there I should mention that I have lived most of my life as an untested pacifist, no military training, no bar fights, and few opportunities to find out just how situational pacifism really is. So in my hour of (or hours, cause this thought process actually went on all day) of hormonal hemorrhaging, I came up with no shortage of fantasy scenarios with my erstwhile opponent where I knifed, shot, dirked and vehicular-homicided my way out of the situation. The fight part of my evolutionary safety system was a blaze with pictures of my enemy’s ultimate destruction, his bleeding, humbled body, crumpled on the pavement while I muttered something cheeky, cool, collected. Yeah, right. I could have peed my pants is more like it. But the bottom line is, if the situation had ended differently, if I had even had enough calm, collected cool to take down his license plate (perhaps THAT is why he turned the corner?) things would have, statistically speaking, ended decidedly in my favor.
I don’t feel good about that, by the way. On the contrary my white guilt is showing when I review the following underlying construction of my privilege. If I had his license number I could have called the cops. I could have told them in my unmistakably authoritative white voice that a large black man in a tiny car just threatened my life. Actually he only threatened my ass, not my whole life, but a slight exaggeration on my part would have improved my case before the judge. It's likely (statistically speaking, not based on his behavior necessarily) that as a Black man in America where one in five or better has met with some part of the business end of the penal system, he would have at least one prior whereas I, with my lily-white suburban background have none. When he and I stood before the judge, the judge would, in all statistical likelihood, and being aware of his priors, and being subconsciously influenced by a mass media that portrays Blacks as prone to violence, take more pity on innocent ol’ me (especially since I had not broken any laws and he had broken at least three). Even if he had not broken laws, as I plied the linguistic skills that got me through graduate school and slipped my silvery tongue over the judge’s ear, she most likely would cave to my story and throw the book at the big "mean" Black guy over there, who by this time had already given up hope that he would ever get a fair trial, because he’d been through this so many times before, and he’d seen his friends go through this, and he’d known so many when he did time up at state that had the same, sorry, story to tell, so many in fact that not all of them could possibly be lying. And by this time he would have reached the unavoidable conclusion that he along with one fifth of the Black men in America were damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Which, by the way, was the reason he was so pissed in the first place, when this cowboy-hat-wearing white boy in his big-ass truck cut him off and made him late for work.
Even more scary, being aware of these dynamics (though not in possession of the elusive license number) actually made me plot, for a few moments, my fantasy revenge. Whoa! I thought I was an anti-racist! Yeah, and I’m a pacifist too, right up until someone threatens me, then I’m a raging, knife wielding, racist mad man, willing to use my privilege to leap large Black men in a single bound, leaving them bleeding, broke, incarcerated, divided from family, deprived of livelihood, pride or even a reason to live, much less a reason to resist a not so subtly but all the same, subconsciously racist culture. Only now, upon writing this some 36 hours later am I able to see clearly through the adrenaline to the compassion of my ideals and wish—though I never want to see him again—that this big, scary Black man receive no harm, and to think that he is just as good of a person as I, and though I judged him harshly in my moment of fear, to imagine that he had likely judged me from a similar place of fear, fear that life was once again about to become critically un-fair, that white people are always throwing their three-quarter ton weight around, and it is always landing on him, and that he would not stand for this one more time, for if he did, he would break and the gash in his soul would cut too deep and he could not face another day being Black in America.
I guess he didn’t quite get the message. He proceeded, almost as if he’d planned it—I mean he acted so fast I can only wonder what he was thinking; I conversely had no time to react—to pass me on the right by using the bike lane on this single lane road. As soon as he got in front of me he stopped. As soon as he stopped he got out of his car. As soon as he got out of his car I realized that he was not a little guy at all. OH, SHIT! Worse yet, he came right to my window, waving his arms and said, “Mother fucker, you don’t cut me off and then just slam on your breaks at me! You get out that car and I will kick your motherfuckin’ ASS!” I just stared at him through my window, which suddenly seemed remarkably thin with him on the other side only a few feet away. I grinned actually, kind of a staring match sort of half-grin, that said, “I’m not going to give in to your threat, I’m gonna pretend it doesn’t bother me (or perhaps pretend this isn’t happening, eeek!) and I’ll just grin until you make your next move, I mean, you wouldn’t actually DO anything with that crossing guard up there looking this way, would you?” And he didn’t. He paused for a moment (an impossibly long, frozen time moment), seemed to regain some of his composure and slowly returned to his car, sauntered I suppose. He drove on through, past the crossing guard, and immediately turned the corner, tailgating someone else onto an unsuspecting residential side street.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make my throat hurt, I was almost dizzy with blood rushing into my head and swirling around my eyeballs. I could almost feel the adrenaline charging up my fight or flight response system, exhilarating me, giving me an uncontrollable high, the grin still not wiped from my face. Then it hit me, the crash after the high, like sugar, caffeine, heroine. But the crash wasn’t lethargy. It was a sick feeling, not nausea exactly because I didn’t feel it in my stomach, more in my head and chest as the epinephrine and cortisol raked little troughs across the surfaces of my cells, accumulating into a mesh of microscopic lacerations that ran rivulets into a gash in my very soul. I felt like I was bleeding inside, bleeding pride, bleeding fear, bleeding confidence, safety, privilege.
I was bleeding privilege because my safe little world, supported by my class standing, my gender, my relative size, my big truck and my above-average job had been breached. A total stranger had suddenly and unexpectedly shattered my illusory bubble. Physical threats are not something that average white, middle class men have to put up with very often. I can only think of two other times in my adult life where I faced such mortal danger from another human. That’s probably more than most folks in my position. But for Black men, or women, the same can not be said. Oh, did I mention? My partner in road rage this day was Black? Yeah, a big, angry, able bodied, Black man. Why does it matter?
It matters because I am white. And as any good antiracist will tell you, that produces a series of interlocking dynamics triggered by the complex social landscape in which this altercation took place. If he had been white I still would have been scared, though not quite as much (unless he was one of those really scary white dudes with big muscles, tattoos, facial hair, you know the kind). I still wouldn’t have gotten out of the truck. But I also wouldn’t have been tempted after the fact to wonder what his race, or his perception of my race, might have had to do with his behavior. Moreover, in the alternate reality where I might have reacted differently, or if one of us had pushed it to an actual physical exchange of blows, the stakes would have been decidedly different and if that had happened and he were Black, in the aftermath (assuming I survived) all the cards would have been stacked in my favor.
Before I go on I should detail some more of my fear-based thought process that ran its ugly course through the darker corners of my mind while my adrenal cortex was still pumping like a windmill in a hurricane. Before I go there I should mention that I have lived most of my life as an untested pacifist, no military training, no bar fights, and few opportunities to find out just how situational pacifism really is. So in my hour of (or hours, cause this thought process actually went on all day) of hormonal hemorrhaging, I came up with no shortage of fantasy scenarios with my erstwhile opponent where I knifed, shot, dirked and vehicular-homicided my way out of the situation. The fight part of my evolutionary safety system was a blaze with pictures of my enemy’s ultimate destruction, his bleeding, humbled body, crumpled on the pavement while I muttered something cheeky, cool, collected. Yeah, right. I could have peed my pants is more like it. But the bottom line is, if the situation had ended differently, if I had even had enough calm, collected cool to take down his license plate (perhaps THAT is why he turned the corner?) things would have, statistically speaking, ended decidedly in my favor.
I don’t feel good about that, by the way. On the contrary my white guilt is showing when I review the following underlying construction of my privilege. If I had his license number I could have called the cops. I could have told them in my unmistakably authoritative white voice that a large black man in a tiny car just threatened my life. Actually he only threatened my ass, not my whole life, but a slight exaggeration on my part would have improved my case before the judge. It's likely (statistically speaking, not based on his behavior necessarily) that as a Black man in America where one in five or better has met with some part of the business end of the penal system, he would have at least one prior whereas I, with my lily-white suburban background have none. When he and I stood before the judge, the judge would, in all statistical likelihood, and being aware of his priors, and being subconsciously influenced by a mass media that portrays Blacks as prone to violence, take more pity on innocent ol’ me (especially since I had not broken any laws and he had broken at least three). Even if he had not broken laws, as I plied the linguistic skills that got me through graduate school and slipped my silvery tongue over the judge’s ear, she most likely would cave to my story and throw the book at the big "mean" Black guy over there, who by this time had already given up hope that he would ever get a fair trial, because he’d been through this so many times before, and he’d seen his friends go through this, and he’d known so many when he did time up at state that had the same, sorry, story to tell, so many in fact that not all of them could possibly be lying. And by this time he would have reached the unavoidable conclusion that he along with one fifth of the Black men in America were damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Which, by the way, was the reason he was so pissed in the first place, when this cowboy-hat-wearing white boy in his big-ass truck cut him off and made him late for work.
Even more scary, being aware of these dynamics (though not in possession of the elusive license number) actually made me plot, for a few moments, my fantasy revenge. Whoa! I thought I was an anti-racist! Yeah, and I’m a pacifist too, right up until someone threatens me, then I’m a raging, knife wielding, racist mad man, willing to use my privilege to leap large Black men in a single bound, leaving them bleeding, broke, incarcerated, divided from family, deprived of livelihood, pride or even a reason to live, much less a reason to resist a not so subtly but all the same, subconsciously racist culture. Only now, upon writing this some 36 hours later am I able to see clearly through the adrenaline to the compassion of my ideals and wish—though I never want to see him again—that this big, scary Black man receive no harm, and to think that he is just as good of a person as I, and though I judged him harshly in my moment of fear, to imagine that he had likely judged me from a similar place of fear, fear that life was once again about to become critically un-fair, that white people are always throwing their three-quarter ton weight around, and it is always landing on him, and that he would not stand for this one more time, for if he did, he would break and the gash in his soul would cut too deep and he could not face another day being Black in America.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
My first Post
Everyone else has a blog or a myspace page or a face book face or whatever, so I figured I better have one too. Even if I never use it, at least I can say I have one. My family has two blogs running, one about the sustainable farm (triskelesfarm.com) and one about our children. But there are things I want to say that don't fit into those rubrics. So I created a space where I could talk about the leftovers, the spare parts of my identity, everything else that's left of me. such as some of my more radical musings, my hunting experiences or my anti-racist self. We are all complex individuals and though the bolgisphere grants us certain non-linear freedoms, we still get put in boxes don't we? I mean, I'm writing in a box right now! So this blog will be my place to wax this way and that, bending the bars of my cage as it were. Besides, what IS left of me?
So here's something I don't get to talk about much, archery. See the photo above. That's what you call "Robin Hooded"! It doesn't happen very often, and I can't say I even meant it to happen, but it did happen. In case you can't make it out that's an arrow shot into the butt of another arrow. COOL!
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