The fall

Last weekend was the first weekend of a fall time tradition, or maybe, as in years past, a fall time necessity. Granted, now it is not so much a necessity, but rather something that signals a primordial brain response that says, now is the time to start preparing for winter. It is the time to provide sustenance for the family, to take the club down from its cradle above the door and go out and provide meat for the family for the winter. It is time to catch the deer being active prior to their reduced wintertime routine. Last weekend was the first weekend of deer hunting season.

I believe in the sanctity of life and thus revere it and recognize it is a gift from our Maker. That being said, the idea of idea of hunting and killing a deer is almost an oxymoron to my previous belief. Then, why in the name of Safeway, Rays, and shrink-wrapped meat do we need to go out hunting? Just that, in the age of convenience, Saran Wrap, and processing there is a certain thing lost. That thing is the idea of the fact that someone had to kill and process that shrink-wrapped steak that we choose from the meat counter in the store; separation of responsibility to the taking of an animal’s life.

I feel by me taking part in the process, it forces me to recognize the fact that even though I may buy meat at the store an animal had to die to provide my sustenance. By me going out fishing or hunting I am putting myself closer to the food chain and to recognize that I am part of it. Dust to dust, that’s what I believe. I cannot separate myself from the fact that I am an integral part of a larger process, and as in the water that I drink, some organic based organism has taken in, processed, and expelled that water before. Maybe it was a dinosaur, or maybe another human being, but it has been cycled through nature before. We do live in a closed system.

Hunting allows me to appreciate nature as its elemental level, a level at which all too often I am too far removed. I am part of the cycle and part of the process of life. The fall is a time of beauty, a time of regeneration where nature is throwing off seasonal appearances and showing off a new look. Hunting season is a time where nature is pushing out its final rush of chlorophyll on those warm fall days and with its final fading gasp it is showing the hidden underlying colors it has for so long cloaked under the green of the leaves. Just after the last chlorophyll rises to the leaves the leaves release their grip on life and fall to the ground to provide a layer of insulation and nutrients to the forest floor for the next organism to use.

And thus starts another life