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Monsoon Season

I woke up this morning to a gentle summer rain and an enormous double rainbow arcing down the valley. One end of the bow appeared to be less than 100 yards away. In the midst of this unexpected morning moisture, clouds and cliffs on the western horizon radiantly glowed with dawn light. And now the desert smells like rain. This is a gift of great magnitude. I love the summer monsoons.

This particular monsoon season has been a spectacular blessing ? especially after last year's dud. For weeks now, we've had almost daily moisture. One storm ten days ago actually dropped some snow in the La Sals. The mountains are green and lush, more reminiscent of June than August. Even the desert is verdant for this time of year, and last week I actually caught the scent of cliffrose on the wind as several plants have decided to embrace a second sense of spring.

After an intensely cold winter and wildly windy spring, this season's amped-up output is most welcome.

The garden certainly enjoys it. We now find ourselves with more food than we know how to prepare. Yesterday was a kitchen day for us, as we made a quart of salsa, two loaves of zucchini bread, six quarts of pickles, and 11 quarts of pickled peppers. And, of course, after this whirlwind of preserving, we discovered more monster zucchini and cucumbers that we missed in our initial look at the garden. Sometimes I wish I could also bottle up the essence of monsoon season in a jar ? along with the pickles and jams ? and save its bounty of blessings for other times of the year. However, perhaps in January when I am eating a few pickled peppers, I'll find a taste of the August rains and smile.

There is other bounty this season, not related to the weather. I think back to the rainless summer of last year and the linear quality of life. I spent the summer working long hours and biking many miles. This summer, for better or for worse, my work schedule is a bit lighter. I'm cycling less. And I'm learning much more. Finding my way around a gun is a new experience. I've been on the river several times, something I've not explored much before. Tyler is teaching me how to kayak. We're hiking peaks in the La Sals I'd never summited. I'm now able to run a chainsaw with a certain degree of confidence. And we're going climbing together next week ? my first time in the great desert outdoors that I love.

My brain is bursting with all these new experiences. Some of the overflow comes from frustration at not yet mastering any of it, but much of it comes from excitement at the fact that life still has the capacity to expand like this, that the range of possibilities is always vast, that I can continue to soak up new experiences ? just as the desert continues to embrace this blessing of monsoon rains.

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Shooting Big, Brown-Eyed Creatures

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the results are in: I passed my hunter safety course with flying colors. I even did well with the range test, scoring 29 out of 30. Of course, the range test involved paper squirrels and rabbits. Actually hunting big game will be much, much different.

Ty and I had dinner with friends last weekend, and I shared the news of my recent entry into hunterhood with the acquisition of my license. I think they were surprised, and perhaps a bit dismayed. One finally asked, "How are you going to shoot an animal when its big, brown, innocent eyes are staring at you? Do you think you can actually do it?" This was asked over a meal containing meat ? a meal that once had big, brown, ooey-gooey eyes.

Not having hunted before, I'm not well equipped to answer that question. However, I responded that my hunch was, in the moment, it wouldn't be about eyeballs. In the moment, it would be about the hunt ? and getting the perfect shot. I guess I'll find out if that's true this fall.

But I think the implied meaning of the question was, "How will you bring yourself to take the life of another sentient being ? and a charismatic or cuddly one, to boot?" Well, for me, I think that's some of the point of hunting.

As a meat-eater, I've felt for years now that it's important for me to take responsibility for my dietary choices and become better connected to the process that brings the food to my plate. If I'm going to eat meat, I need to know that, once upon a time, that steak was a charismatic sentient being with big, soulful eyes. It once had a mother, it once had a life, and it once ate greens instead of being eaten with them. And I need to be okay with that. If, in hunting, I discover that I'm not okay with that ? if those big, brown eyes make me want to cry instead of kill ? then it's time to hang up my steak knife. It's as simple as that. I need to learn whether I'm okay with the procurement of my protein.

With our current system of feedlots, meatpacking plants and supermarkets, it's all too easy to live a life disconnected from the source of our meat. We don't even see the butcher cut it up anymore. It's as if shrink-wrapped burger and bacon grew on meat trees, a plant whose season was year-round. I don't think this disconnect is healthy. And it certainly doesn't leave room for reverence for the lives sacrificed in the name of sustenance.

So this is why I'll be shooting aluminum cans this summer and donning hunter orange in the fall. For me, it's not so much about sport or the thrill of the kill; instead, it's about learning where my place is on the food chain and what it takes to be there. It's about learning the power and responsibility that comes with being a predator. And it's about making a connection with my wide-eyed prey and the story that brought it into my life.

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Hippies are Hunters, Too

Recently, my friend Laurel and I decided to enroll in Hunter Safety together. Both of us want to learn how to hunt as a part of our efforts to be more self-reliant when it comes to food. This is but one piece of a larger process that involves gardening, gathering, canning and jamming. There's a lot to learn, but it's exciting. This year, Tyler and I have pickles and preserves in the pantry, courtesy of our own attentive work. We have zucchini, cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes aplenty. Salsa and peach jam are next on our kitchen agenda.

The garden is such an accessible aspect of food production. Anyone with a small plot of ground ? or some planters ? can produce food. Hunting, however, is in an entirely different realm. It involves guns and the taking of life. It involves knowing your way around the anatomy of an animal, knowing what, where and how to cut. It's a deeply intimate experience, not for the faint of heart.

Thus, here we are in Hunter Safety, our first step on the path to becoming more responsible and conscientious meat-eaters. And it's a cultural experience, to say the least. I feel entirely out of my element. I didn't grow up with guns or hunting or the consumption of game. Only ten percent of the population hunts, and it's a ten percent I haven't spent much time with. Until now.

Laurel and I sit in the back of the classroom. Both of us are alumni of the local wilderness group. We're not your standard class participants. Much of the rest of the class consists of young boys, ages 7-17. There are a few young girls and a few women, too. Three high school boys sit in front of Laurel and me each session. Many jokes are made at the expense of "hippies." We quietly smile each time. I guess we're not your standard hippies, either.

We've taken to going out in the evenings, accompanied by sunset light and lightning, to shoot bottles and cans with Laurel's new .22. It's a helluva lot of fun, though I worry that I won't be able to pass Saturday's range test. How humiliating would it be to have a seven-year-old show me up with a gun? I shudder to think about it. Laurel's a good shot. I don't worry about her.

Hippies with guns? Who woulda thunk it?

It's funny, this perceived divide between hunters and hippies, as if we're two different species and ne'er the two shall mix. Sure, there are the different ends of the spectrum, with PETA members on one end and unapologetic poachers on the other, but there's a lot of common ground in between. Hunters are amazing stewards of the land. More money goes toward habitat restoration from hunters than from any other group. And many so-called hippies are concerned with where their food comes from, wanting to ensure it originated closer to home, wanting to take more control over its harvest?even if harvesting requires a gun.

And I think of the true costs ? both in carbon and capital ? of eating a strictly vegetarian diet. How far do our soy products travel? At best, the soy is grown in the Midwest, but these days, it's just as likely to come from overseas. The soybeans are shipped to the processing plant, the processed product is shipped to the food manufacturer, and the manufactured tofu or soymilk is shipped to the supermarket. How many miles did it travel to your plate? Do you know what it encountered ? pesticides, chemicals, other foods ? along the way? Is this the most environmentally friendly or conscious way to eat?

Meanwhile, an elk harvested in the La Sals 25 miles from my home is about as local as it gets. I know what it's eaten because I've hiked over that ground countless times. The meat will be processed here and made into meals with our own hands. In my mind, this seems like the more eco-friendly choice. Even if it does involve a gun.

For now, though, harvesting an elk is a long way off for me. I have yet to even get comfortable with the .22. But I'm making progress. Recyclables fear me. And soon, I may not be just a hippie. I might be an armed hippie. And, hopefully, a well-fed one.

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Contemplating Wilderness

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

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The Third Depression

My father just lost his job ? yet another casualty of what some are calling The Third Depression (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman). This makes the whole damned economic mess hit very close to home.

Of course, intellectually, I've gotten the fact that the economy fell off the tracks a while back. And I've seen evidence of it. But I live a lifestyle - amongst others in a similar socioeconomic class - that has always demanded a certain amount of fiscal conservatism, belt-tightening and a lack of extravagance. I live in a trailer, for chrissakes. Vacation for my friends and me is a river trip (sometimes on a mattress, no less) or a week on foot in the canyons. We drink PBR. We eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Often. None of which is to say it's a bad life. We've all chosen it.

Somewhere along the line, many of us in Moab chose place and the freedom to commune with it over large bank accounts and the 9-to-5 grind. We've chosen to pursue a different kind of success based on a different measure of happiness. With the onset of The Third Depression, it's just made it a little bit harder to pull the various income puzzle pieces together - there are fewer to go around - and we notice more people in the same plight. I worked for a year at the local thrift store, and let me tell you, business there is booming.

But all of this is a much different ball of wax for my parents - with the toll it takes on both their future financial security and their sense of hope and well-being in this world. While some of my friends work seasonally and look forward to the winter months of "fun-employment," drawing checks from the state is anything but fun for my dad. He's a hard worker. The most dedicated I know. This drive is in his genes, coming from an entrepreneurial man - my grandfather - who always found a way to comfortably support a family of ten. My dad sold heavy machinery, equipment that was directly tied to housing starts. With the housing market in the tank in recent years, my dad still found a way to remain amongst the top three salespeople in the company - a company that has locations all up and down the West Coast.

He's a damned hard worker.

Sometimes I have to wonder where the fairness is in all of this?even though I'm old enough to know that the field of economics doesn't operate on principles of fairness. If it did, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. And more than sometimes I find myself wondering where my parents go from here. And how might I help them? What can I offer? Could I support them if I had taken that lucrative PR gig straight out of college? Or would I simply be in the same boat right now, peddling my own resume?

I'm hopeful that my dad will find work soon, though it likely won't be in Oregon, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. In this way, being out of work doesn't simply throw my parent's financial future in limbo. It tosses everything into the air - like someone clumsily pulling the tablecloth out from under all the place-settings, with my parents left to watch the slow-motion gravitational pull on all the breakables. Will they land back in place? Will they land safely in a new configuration? Or will everything simply shatter?

My mom is a lifelong Medford, Oregon, resident. Same with her mother. And her mother. Though she's dreamed, in recent years, of a new beginning elsewhere, I've always wanted the wrenching transition to be on my parents' terms, not foisted upon them by the vicissitudes of an uncaring financial market.

For my friends and me, eating grilled cheese in our unconventional, on-the-cheap homes is life as we know it. We smile and laugh at it often. We have to. It's an adventure, one replete with unsavory components like black water tanks (I never thought I'd become so intimate with sewage) and bug infestations. And while I am happy with my still-life-in-travel-trailer, I don't wish the same for my folks. I want them to be comfortable and at peace - commodities that are in much shorter supply during this era of The Third Depression.