Impermanence
In the wilderness of northern California, a mother black bear and her cub came face to face with my eight year old son on a cold crisp morning in autumn. He returned to our hunting cabin that day, unharmed, but wild-eyed and torn wide open into an awareness of his mortality- his vulnerability in these mountains- where he was not just a boy, but prey.
He had always slept soundly since he’d been a baby, but since seeing those bears, he lay awake- trembling in bed- in fear our rickety wooden cabin walls and flimsy single-paned windows, covered with cobwebs, would be shattered by claws- that we’d all be mauled. The screeching shrieks of mountain lions, echoing off the canyon walls in the night, didn’t help.
He sheepishly made his way through the pitch blackness, wrapped in his cream-colored blankey- covered in brown polka dots. His voice cracked with fear and shame when he asked if he could please snuggle with us in our bed. I lifted the soft down comforter, and he gratefully crawled in beside me. I felt warm and safe, but I wondered how long this would last.
I awoke to screaming, whisper screaming- shaking me awake- the dawn’s light beaming through the dusty windows. “Mom! Mom! Buck! There’s a buck! Buck! Fuck!!!!”
Our family had been deer hunting for months into the highest mountain wilderness and along miles of winding river beds. This was the final day of hunting season, and we’d seen nothing. We were packing to go home this day. We were filled with colorful visions of breathtaking scenery and the inner peace from the quiet stillness of the hunt, but we were empty handed, no deer meat for the year.
“Buck! Buck!”
Daniel and I sat up in bed. Sure enough, standing outside the front window was a giant forked horn, black tailed deer. We hushed the children whose eyes were all beaming with excitement, like it was Christmas morning. Gideon’s hair was matted on one side and Lucetta’s curls resembled Medusa.
Daniel crept down the creaky wooden stairs that vibrated the walls of the entire cabin. He grabbed his rifle and snuck out the back screen door. That rifle was his great-grandfather’s who’d hunted this same land.
As Daniel disappeared from our sight, we stared at the buck outside, frozen still in the dry grass. A cloud of steam rising from his nostrils, it stood, magnificent- framed in the window like a postcard.
We dare not breathe, we hold our breath to keep the specs of sparkling dust from dancing on a nearby beam of sunlight. We become invisible. One of the deer’s ears is pricked toward Daniel’s quiet, creeping footsteps- the other ear toward the deep percussion of four pounding hearts. We try to quiet them, slow them down, make them pause. It feels like an eternity. It’s enough time for me to switch off predator and switch on mother.
“Why are you just standing there? I taught you to run from danger- trust your instincts and get out of here!” I want him to run, but I need him to stay.
Time runs out- the silence broken by the crack of the rifle shot, echoing through the cold morning stillness. Daniel never missed, his gentle hands, calm and steady.
We watch as the majestic animal, with its elegant crown of antlers, perked ears and round black eyes- collapses like rubber, down to the hard ground, into an awkward, slumped pile on the crumbled shale gravel. His heart stops, and ours begin to beat again. A blue jay squawks, then silence.
The children were frozen, stunned- they looked at me- then at one another with wide eyes. They began hugging each other and shrieking, “We got a buck! We got a buck!” Elliott beamed with pride, that due to his wakefulness in the night, he’d spotted the deer. “I saw it, I spotted that buck!”
We all threw on random, unmatching clothes and filed outside. Lucetta, three years old, was wrapped in her dingy, purple blankey, which was now much more grey than purple, her thumb in her mouth.
We encircled the body lying lifeless on the hill outside the cabin. A fly landed on its glassy eyeball, but it didn’t blink.
We all grew silent, just the cackling of a tree squirrel in the nearby pine. I strained to see some sort of rising spirit from the body, but couldn’t. But its presence felt strong, like it hovered in limbo with us around its body.
Dark ruby red blood trickled out of the bullet hole and down his neck, forming a small puddle of blood in the dust below. That blood was of my own. I gave birth to that deer. I licked it clean when it was born and gave it milk from my breast. I wrapped my body around his in the night to keep him warm. I did everything in my power to keep him safe from the dangerous world, but I could not stay by his side forever. He was all grown up, and on his own. The forest was his to navigate without me.
“Look at how red his blood is.” Gideon remarked. Lucetta’s little fingers touched the soft, furry ear. I knelt down and put my right hand on the coarse, tan fur of the deer’s belly. Daniel set down his gun and knelt down across from me. We locked eyes, and shared a look of a thousand words unspoken. We watched as the children laid their miniature hands on the deer, exploring its still warm body.
“Look Gideon, Mom’s crying.” Elliott said softly. They saw tears in my eyes as my heart pounded in my ears and throat. I breathed in the cool autumn air and wrapped my arms around both of my sons, burying my nose in their dusty hair. I breathed out the sadness before I got lost in it, trying to feel the presence of the moment, the timeless sacredness of this ritual.
Daniel gutted the belly so the meat wouldn’t spoil, his hands covered in blood, the same gentle hands that held our newborns, changed their diapers and wiped away all of our tears. We hung the deer upside down to be skinned from the gamble on the old oak. A tree that has witnessed a thousand hunts and a thousand births.
From this moment on- my contemplation turns to function. We remove the soft warm heart. We all hold it and examine its chambers. I set to work, cutting it into cubes, butter and garlic simmering in a pan on the kitchen stove, adding a sprig of rosemary I brought from the garden. From that moment- within an hour, Daniel will have skinned the deer, we’ll have deconstructed the body and skeleton into familiar cuts of meat- 150 pounds of ribs, filet mignon, flank steaks, stew meat and burger, packed in coolers on ice.
I’ll dissect the deer’s organs with the kids to educate them in anatomy- how soft and spongy healthy pink lungs look, the hollowness of a windpipe, how the bladder connects to a penis and what the inside of testicles look like. The smell will change from death and dried blood to burning sage, bouquets of rosemary and cooking venison. The dogs will clean up remaining scraps with deep appreciation, and nothing will remain visible of the morning’s kill.
The delicate dance to blend celebration with murder- to set the tone- not too joyous, but not too somber. This moment was the hunt, from life to death, through my children’s eyes. Togetherness, stillness, reverence, compassion, awareness, wisdom and storytelling from ages past, science, religion, energy and life.
Over the course of the year, at each meal, with every bite, we relive that one moment of life to death. We are awakened into life, reminded of impermanence. Death, blood, butter, garlic, life. This is MY life, my family. These are my children, and through this sacrifice of nature, my instincts reawaken to how ALIVE they are, in this short time we all share.
Elliott slept soundly every night from that moment on.
