Despite all of this, I am shocked to find myself wanting a child more than ever before. My fears about parenting have shifted suddenly: I no longer worry about what a child would do to my career or my social life; instead, I obsess over what could happen to the child. In a strange way, this comforts me. This more selfless fear is more crippling and yet it feels more appropriate, more parental. As my cousins and parents fall into a void of grief, the depth of which terrifies me, I realize all that I could miss out on if I succumb to my fears. Maybe all of this loss will make me a better parent in some ways, too. I won’t take things for granted. I will appreciate the good days and happy moments because I will know how fleeting they are. Here’s the thing: If anxiety is one side of a coin, then the flip side—the brighter side—is appreciating each moment. Because if the next breath I draw could be my last, then it had better be a deep one.
All of these deaths have focused me. I waste less time browsing the Internet. I watch fewer bad movies. I shrug off minor annoyances and feel silly to think that just one year ago, I would have wasted time being upset. I work hard at my job, but I no longer fret about the size of my newspaper or the title on my business card. When we go camping and fly-fishing on weekends, I find myself better able to let go of work and other stress and simply enjoy the moment. I examine the glistening fly as it drifts down the stream in front of me. I revel in the sunlight and the cool water swirling around my legs. I look at Scott, standing downstream from me, and I smile. I am here, right now, paying attention.
These losses have left me lean and urgent, the way elk in Yellowstone must feel since their predator, the wolf, returned. This is why it’s important to be reminded of death: so that you never forget that life is temporary and every day matters.
Some days, grief knocks the wind out of me. But just as often, I am bowled over by love. At night, I lie down in our bed and nestle my face into Scott’s warm neck. Something—life?—grabs me by the shoulders, looks me in the eyes and tells me: Cherish this. You only have this. You only have now. I inhale my favorite scent in the world—his. And I feel truly, completely lucky.
CHAPTER 12
KILLING BAMBI, REVIVING ARTEMIS
A few years ago, I spent a day on the banks of a roaring Deschutes River waterfall with a Warm Springs Indian named Roland. He worked as a “creeler” at the time, counting the salmon and steelhead caught by tribal members at this ancient fishing site. He was short and round, with a wide grin framing a chipped front tooth. I was interviewing him about his job and we got off track, talking about his own passion for fishing. He mentioned that in his culture, it’s a tradition to cease fishing for months or even years when a close friend or family member dies. He didn’t explain the custom fully at the time, but I think about it now because suddenly it makes sense to me. There’s the obvious reason: that in mourning we lose our desire even for things that once made us happy. But I suspect another reason, too. Perhaps it’s as simple as needing a break from death, even the death of fish. One reason that hunting is so uncomfortable to non-hunters in the first place is because of its connection to death. After my brother’s death, unable to bear another modicum of guilt or sadness, I stop hunting.
This hiatus does not, however, mean that I manage to avoid killing anything. In the fall of 2009, I take a leave of absence from the newspaper and move across the country to Ann Arbor for a nine-month journalism fellowship. Scott stays in Bend but flies to Michigan every month or so to visit.
One afternoon in September, I am pushing a rickety electric mower across the lawn of my rented house when I feel a thump against my shin. I look down. Something small and gray convulses at my feet. I gasp, let go of the mower and jump back, but this little animal flops and I accidentally step on it. It pops straight up and lands on its side, unable to run forward like a normal… whatever it is. I must have cut off one of its legs. It lurches, as if compensating for its lost limb—limbs? I shriek and run toward the house.
From the porch, I glance back, bracing for another pained hop, or at least a twitch. Instead, I see nothing. The grass is still. I take a deep breath and creep back to the lawn mower. The animal lies dead, a few feet away.
I decide to finish mowing. The death was unfortunate, I tell myself, but half the lawn remains unmowed and I have nobody to do it for me. Lawn maintenance is written into my lease. So I resume, slowly pushing the grumbling mower and glancing back every few feet at the dead critter. Should I move it? Put it in a bag and throw it in the garbage? Leave it for some hungry scavenger? As I turn the mower and head back toward the scene of the death, I notice a patch of fur on the ground, a few feet from the dead animal. Suddenly, another creature pops out of the fluff and clumsily hops away.
I flinch but mow on, my eyes glued to the tiny (live) animal. It’s still unsteady as it crosses the lawn and ducks under a spruce. Its ears aren’t long yet, but they stand up. Though there’s no ball of fluff on its rump, I know exactly what it is: a baby cottontail. It’s also the spitting image of the thing I just killed. When I cross the lawn again, I give the patch of bunny-bearing fur a wide berth, but two more hop out of the fuzz-covered hole. They scamper toward the street. I blink back tears but keep mowing, eager to finish the job so I can spend the rest of the day indoors.
As I put away the lawn mower, every pinecone I step on makes me jump. I eye every squirrel and sparrow with paranoia. In my own yard, I am terrified of all these tiny creatures squatting around me, and angry, too, as if they’ve framed me for a crime I never intended to commit. I’m equally afraid that I will accidentally kill something else. I waffle between feeling like an invader who has no business being here and wondering: Can’t a person be left alone in her own yard?
In the safety of my locked house, I calm myself down. It doesn’t take me long to conclude that I should go back outside and pick up the dead rabbit. Running in here to avoid it doesn’t change the fact that I killed an animal. The least I can do is bury it out of respect.
I unlock my door and tiptoe outside. But the bunny is gone. Less than half an hour has passed since I went inside, and it’s nowhere to be seen. I walk all over the lawn to make sure, focusing my search around the fluff-covered burrow. No rabbit. I know what probably happened: A neighbor’s cat got it, or a bird swooped down and carried it away in its talons. Nature is everywhere, even in this suburban neighborhood. Still, an unrealistic worry creeps into my brain and won’t let go: Maybe the grief-stricken mother dragged the baby back into her burrow, to mourn over the body. I start to think of the bunny as Audrey, and Donna as the mother. I am a monster, a murderer, a destroyer of life and the happiness of all the bunnies who loved this one. Tears well up in my eyes and I run back inside.
For the rest of the day, I am haunted not only by guilt but also by my own distress over this death. Why did the death of this rabbit bother me so much? The first time I killed a rabbit, during that hunting workshop with the beagles, I was thrilled about it. What’s the difference? Yes, that was an adult and this was a baby, but there must be a more significant distinction, too.
I have felt nervous and ambivalent approaching every hunt I’ve ever gone on. In retrospect, these feelings were part of my mental preparation. Each hunt has precipitated a new reckoning of all the thoughts involved in my initial decision three years ago to try hunting.
In fact, every one of my hunting experiences could be broken down into a series of questions that I ask myself. It starts with: Do I want to hunt? Then, do I want to hunt for this species? At this time? In this place? Using this weapon? With these hunters? Other, subtler questions make up each of these: Am I ready to bear the guilt that may follow this killing? Will this experience be one that I can retell and feel proud of? Eventually, this flow chart culminates in one particular shot at one individual animal. And so by the time I pull the trigger, I have decided that I do want to kill this animal in this place at this moment. The kill is undeniably purposeful.
With this baby rabbit, however, I asked myself no such questi
ons. I had no time to prepare for the emotions, to weigh the magnitude of that life against my own intentions. After several years of narrowing so much purpose onto each life I take, I am even more horrified by this thoughtless, careless death than I would have been before I started hunting.
Those of us who hunt, who kill animals on purpose, open ourselves up to a lot of criticism, including from other hunters. Since I started hunting, I have joined in the condemnation of so-called road hunters, who lean out their windows hoping to shoot their prey without getting out of their trucks. Hunters who hike miles away from roads and backpack into wilderness areas criticize these hunters as being lazy. But their laziness pales in comparison with the hundreds of millions who buy their meat already killed, butchered and shrink-wrapped, right? Well, not necessarily.
It’s a big deal to kill an animal, and an even bigger deal to do so on purpose. As hunters, we carry a grave responsibility. The questions we ask ourselves—Is it sporting? Did I give fair chase?—matter. Not everyone believes hunting is justified, and that’s okay. But each hunter must justify it to herself. And these questions matter even more when you consider that not everyone can hunt.
There is not nearly enough habitat or wildlife left in the United States to sustain three hundred million hunters. Unlike gun ownership, the Constitution—no matter how you interpret it—does not guarantee our right to hunt. Several states, however, have amended their own constitutions to protect citizens’ right to hunt. Though I have become a staunch defender of hunting, I don’t think of it as an inalienable right, nor do I think it should be considered one. Hunting is an immense privilege. And one of its greatest values is that it requires near-constant reassessment of the situation and surroundings. Just because you can take a shot at an animal, for example, doesn’t mean you should. Likewise, responsible agencies should continuously, realistically assess state wildlife populations, habitat health and hunting quotas. It’s not a stretch to imagine that wildlife habitat in a particular area—or even an entire state—could become so degraded that hunting there is no longer feasible or responsible.
Even though not all Americans can hunt, there are ways for non-hunters to support responsible hunting. The owners of large acreage could allow ethical hunters to hunt on their property as the law permits. And imagine if environmentalists partnered with hunters to turn conservation-minded sportsmen’s groups into juggernauts more powerful than the National Rifle Association. Perhaps most important, greater acceptance of hunting could go a long way toward promoting sound environmental policies. Hunters and non-hunters alike share ownership of local wildlife, which are property of the state. Non-hunters can help by supporting sound wildlife management policies. Agencies that regulate hunting should be held to high scientific standards and should be adequately financed. These goals require all citizens—not just hunters—to pay close attention and vote responsibly.
Even during my hiatus, I can’t stop thinking about these issues facing the future of American hunting. After all that I’ve gained from my hunting experiences, I feel a strange responsibility to pick up my gun and hunt again. It’s as if, by taking a break from hunting, I am turning my back on the very tradition I once vowed to help resuscitate. Feeling too guilty to keep hunting, I am startled by this new guilt caused by not hunting.
Interestingly, many experts believe that women are the key to reviving hunting and fishing in the United States. The idea is that if the mother of a household hunts, her children are more likely to embrace the sport. Most states now offer Becoming an Outdoors Woman workshops, like the pheasant hunt I joined, to introduce women to hunting and fishing. The effort seems to be working. One in ten American hunters is female—our gender’s highest participation rate in history—and we are the only demographic of hunters currently on the rise.
Today, with reliable firearms and other improved technology, there is no physical reason why women can’t hunt as capably as men. I know a woman who shot a six-point buck when she was almost eight months pregnant. In fact, female newcomers might be exactly what the sport needs for one obscure reason: Many female hunters learn the sport as adults. Making a conscientious decision to hunt—rather than doing it because your parents want you to—requires serious ethical deliberation that is likely to creep into other aspects of hunting, too.
My friend Jessie, for example, never considered hunting until, in her twenties, she fell in love with a hunter. At first, this still wasn’t enough to convince Jessie to pick up a gun. But she enjoyed cooking and eating the wild game that Andy brought home. Soon she was hiking behind Andy and his parents as they hunted.
“Eventually, I thought that if I was going to eat it, I should be okay with killing it,” she told me. “And I wanted to see what goes into the death of animal… There is no way to really understand it until you do it yourself.”
Jessie had contemplated the philosophy and psychology of hunting before she ever loaded a gun. All of this consideration made her more likely to become a committed hunter, continuing the tradition well into the future. It also made her more likely to recognize the far-reaching implications of hunting, and to do her part by joining sportsmen’s organizations and closely following the politics of wildlife management. In short, she is exactly the kind of new hunter that is needed to keep the tradition alive.
In a sense, hunting is a final frontier of feminism. As women make up a growing percentage of American hunters, we quietly lay claim to a part of humanity that has been dominated by men. Women born to hunters or in love with hunters weren’t always allowed to participate. Tina, a hunter in her early sixties who lives in La Pine, grew up with two brothers. Her father took the boys hunting and sometimes let Tina tag along but didn’t let her hold the gun or take a shot. One day, one of the boys killed a deer. The father instructed the children in how to dress the deer, but both boys were too scared to take the knife to the hide. Eventually, Tina grew frustrated of waiting.
“I said, ‘Give me that, I’ll do it,’ and I grabbed the knife,” she told me. “And then I cleaned the whole deer.”
It’s strange to think that for millennia, men have done almost all the hunting while women focused on other roles such as gathering and child rearing. Of course there are exceptions—Artemis the huntress, for example, is a feminist symbol from ancient Greece. On a whim, I pick up a book of Greek mythology at a library in Ann Arbor. Almost immediately, I am captivated by the stories about strong, mysterious Artemis.
For this goddess, the Greeks spared no meaning. She represented Nature, Wilderness, the Hunt, the Moon, Virginity and Fertility. To some, she embodied Death and Vengeance. She was as complicated as her broad assignments would suggest, a goddess of contradictions. Armed with a silver bow and a quiver of arrows, she inflicted illness and death on those she also protected. She had great respect for animals and also hunted them, leading a posse of nymphs through the forest in pursuit of game. She wore a short tunic like men did at the time, instead of the long gowns worn by women, to allow freer movement while hunting. She loved wild things but she held captive a group of stags who pulled her golden chariot. She was usually depicted with one of these deer or with one of her many hunting dogs.
Combing through the stories of Artemis, it’s clear that different hunts meant very different things to her, and to the Greek people who worshipped her. She could be vengeful. Some versions of mythology claim that Artemis killed Orion—the only hunter whose skills matched her own—as punishment for boasting that he would track down and kill every wild beast alive.
Artemis was virginal and fiercely protective of her purity. A hunter named Actaeon once happened upon her and her nymphs bathing nude in a secluded pond. Stunned by their beauty, he hid and watched them. But Artemis saw him and showed no mercy: She turned him into a buck and then spurred his own dogs to chase it. They tore the stag apart before finally recognizing him.
The goddess could also be kind. As she was a master archer, death by her arrow was considered a gift, a blessing. Everyone must d
ie somehow, after all, and this death was swift and painless. She also healed and protected. As the goddess of childbirth, she represented the entire life cycle. But rather than create life of her own by bearing children, she asked her father, Zeus, for the gift of eternal virginity.
Reading this makes me stop and think, again, about my ongoing hesitance over whether to have children. It also makes me more aggressive in my Artemis research. Yet I find nothing to explain the goddess’s reasoning for her request. Would gaining a child have meant losing something even more precious to her? Was she, too, afraid of all the heartache lurking in the depths of parenthood? Did she know something that I don’t?
When I stop my own navel-gazing and consider Artemis as a public icon, I am stunned that one deity could embody all of these diametrical forces. She was light and dark, life and death. She was not a Disney princess, all good or all bad. She was—all the mythology notwithstanding—realistic. No character in today’s culture would be asked to represent such a complex collection of properties. We much prefer to compartmentalize our symbols. This is particularly true in our portrayal of animals.
Take, again, the movie Bambi, for example, which reinforces the myth that hunting and eating prey is equivalent to killing and eating one’s friends—Bambi, Faline or Thumper—for dinner. Hunting has taught me to rethink this. I know that the truth is murkier and more complicated. Yet since this string of deaths began last fall, I have found myself trying to believe again in Disney’s version of pain-free nature. After so much loss in such a short period of time, I’ve wanted to separate myself as much as possible from any death or suffering. I haven’t wanted Artemis, I’ve wanted Bambi.
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