Oh, Deer

(sorry for the weak pun, but I just had to)

I'm 30 years old, grew up in rural Idaho, on a farm and ranch, and worked in a butcher shop during highschool. Until yesterday afternoon, I had not completed one of rural America's quasi-rites of passage, the hunting and killing of wild game. In years past, my reasons for declining were manifold; I don't need the meat, I don't have time or energy to process the deer; I've seen too many poorly killed animals delivered to the butcher shop I worked in to take part in such things.

But things change. Or, more accurately perhaps, I change. In growing up on a farm, I figured that I was head and shoulders above all of those "city kids" when it came to knowing where my food came from. And while I was living on the farm, to a good extent I was right. Sort of.
Food procurement on the farm did involve local suppliers with relationships to the community when it came to such things as the butchering of animals and raising of some summer produce, which despite our limited growing season, still yielded a bounty of veggies, berries, and some fruits from orchards in the lower elevations (I recall one year zucchini were so plentiful that the nonplussed gardeners, not willing to leave such things to waste but quite sick and tired of zucchini bread, zucchini parmesean, zucchini al fredo, and zucchini flambé, resorted to leaving them in random mailboxes).
Still, we got a lot of our groceries from the Standard American Grocery (SAG) store, complete with Standard American sodas, commerical dairy, and processed grain products. Sure, I knew where meat came from. I knew where grain came from, and witnessed the hard labor that went into such things. But I never thought about the rest. Like so many other things, it was assumed that it was right and natural, and it must not be too bad.

Then in 2010, I discovered the "Paleolithic" nutritional approach on a podcast featuring Loren Cordain, and my sophomore year course in World Pre-history and the mention of "diseases of civilization" came rushing back to me. It made a lot of sense. In the weeks and months that followed, I incorporated these concepts into my diet, dropping some 60+ pounds of extra "make that a large Coke" fat. Being an auditory learner, I listened to every podcast I could get my hands on, from Robb Wolf's Paleo Solution, to Everyday Paleo's, to Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low-Carb. The consistent underlying message in each one of these is this: our food system is messed up, and we're getting messed up because of it. I decided that I must retake some small part of my place in the food chain. I am responsible for what goes into my body. If I do not make those choices, someone else will.

So yesterday, I found myself on a snowy hillside in north-central Idaho, standing in awe over my first kill. He did not suffer, something that I had prayed for. (Taking an animal for food is one thing. To cause suffering while doing so is another.) The rifle shot was picture perfect, entering through the front of the chest and exiting by the last rib. After a prayer of thanks and some words of thanks to the deer (yeah, I'm wierd like that), I set about dressing the deer. Waiting for my Dad to come back with a four-wheeler, it occurred to me that this deer never worried about his food, or where it came from. His world was around him and in him. Being alive was about eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, and just...being there.

Are we so different? Should we be? We've certainly made ourselves removed from the meeting of the most basic needs of life. We don't have dirt under our nails, blood on our hands, or callouses on our fingers. We have the internet. We have cell-phones We have 60-hour a week jobs, moving numbers around on said internet while talking on said cell-phones. We have...distractons. We fail to be in contact with our own world at the expense of keeping tabs on the daily life of people who will never, ever put forth anything useful into society. We celebrate "culture" (in the lay, entertainment-while-drinking-overpriced-wine, sense) while ignoring the cultural (in anthropological sense) foundation that allows for such things to occur.

We want so much, but we ask for the wrong things. We want entertainment. We want flash. But we need good work. We need to know where our food comes from, and to participate in making it. We need time to be silent and thankful, regardless of our beliefs or values. One cannot help but wonder if our level of angst as a society, the number of psychological disorders found in modern day, and our superbly poor treatment of other humans does not stem from having no real concept of where we fit in this world. And, I think, without that, we can never just be...