the daily special

It’s morning, heralding the inevitable convergence of four people’s needs at one kitchen table. Col is taping and folding an enormous paper airplane, enveloped in the auditory fog of his own whistling. Rose is explaining how she likes oatmeal but only under certain, somewhat changeable circumstances. (She’s also drinking milk with a straw AND medicine spoon because apparently there could always be a little more plastic involved with her food). I am pondering what to do with all the backyard grapes and apples we picked in hopes of discouraging the neighborhood bear. Dan is pushing a glossy hunting magazine in front of me, pointing to a photo of a massive bull elk, asking, “this one?”

The bull stands broadside and I mark an X on his vitals; this is the shot I pray for. On an elk facing forward, I pen an X adjacent to his mane of neck fur, into that vital pouch of lung. “Dead on, honey!” Dan says. He flips through pages, pointing out elk in varying positions. “Don’t think, just place the mark,” he instructs. He turns pages, I scrawl killing Xs.

“Ok, with this position you need to shoot higher,” Dan instructs.

“But, wouldn’t I be shooting through the scapula?”

“Sure, sometimes you’ll break through bone to get to the vitals.”

Oh.

Moments like this are sobering. I don’t want to hurt anybody. In June, backpacking alone, I came across a small herd of cow elk grazing in a meadow. I took off my pack and leaned against a rock, watching their velvety brown heads lowered to the earth, tearing mouthfuls of new summer grass. When they raised watchful eyes towards me, I whispered, You’re OK. I‘m not going to hurt you. 

At least not until fall.

Oof.

Mornings, after meditating, I pull the hunting rifle out of the case and practice different positions: sitting, standing, kneeling, with a rest, without. Next, I do lunges and squats while sleep-rumpled kids blink their way into the livingroom, “Good morning…pant…pant…darlings!”

Every day I do at least one thing for the cause—ride my bike uphill, lunges and squats, guzzle bone broth, target practice, prepare my mind, concoct uber-calorie backpack snacks—while also putting pounds of tomatoes through the preservation paces. I read The Magician’s Elephant to the kids while wriggling into thick, wool pants. “How do they feel?” Dan asks. Col inspects and assesses the situation: “a little bottom heavy.”

Everything is still a little surreal and romantic: packing the truck with firewood, marking X’s on airbrushed photos, imagining sneaking through the Technicolor autumn woods with a goal far removed from say, trying to turn Rose against plastic.

And then, everything comes startlingly into focus. I’m in the “shooting meadow” with Dan, pushing copper bullets–which are just so alarmingly…bullet-like–into the rifle chamber. It’s 85F and I’m practicing shooting with a backpack, jacket and wool gloves. I’m wedged against a ponderosa stump, thistles biting my legs, trying to condense my multi-pronged mental checklist into one swift, decisive action.

The shots go where I want them to at 150 yards, and I allow myself to think that maybe—if all the many other factors converge with mystical-like order, then maybe—I can pull this off.

Driving home, Dan says, “Our advantage is that we’re not afraid to go where the animals are.”

“We’re not?”

“Right. Because we’re in good shape and our minds are strong, too.”

Why am I doing this? For adventure, challenge, connection, intimacy with my food, the season and the land. I’m also interested in the notion that instead of being a mom who brings home, um, library books, I could be the mom who brings home meat.

My hunting season starts in less than one week.

My friend, Mikel, asked me this morning, “Are you nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Excited?”

“Yes.”

“Scared?”

“Yes.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes.”

Grape-apple fruit leather

xo,

Rachel